Aerodynamic performances and near wake of an Ahmed body under unsteady flow conditions

• An Ahmed body under unsteady flow conditions is investigated experimentally in wind tunnel and compared with steady flow. • Drag, lift and pitching moment performances are measured by high resolution balance and wake details by High-Speed PIV. • Increment of drag and lift coefficients with yaw angles and slight decrease with amplitude of oscillation are observed. • Wake alternates between symmetrical and non-symmetrical patterns related to yaw and forcing blade angular positions. • This investigation allows improving assisted-driving vehicles in unsteady gusts and wakes, avoiding misleading control. This paper experimentally characterizes unsteady effects and flow fields around the Ahmed Body, by analyzing global forces and detailed wake effects. The results are compared to those obtained under steady conditions, with varying wind tunnel velocities and different yaw angles between the model and the free stream. Unsteady fields are generated by means of oscillating blades positioned at the inlet of the test section, whose amplitudes and frequencies can be easily controlled. Specifically, low frequencies, around a few Hertz, as those in the typical range generating load oscillations on vehicles, are considered. The results in terms of force coefficients, obtained by a dynamometric balance, and velocity fields, obtained by Particle Image Velocimetry, are processed in order to derive time-average statistics and also phase-average statistics, as related to forcing blade instantaneous positioning. This type of analysis can be performed thanks to the high temporal resolution of measurement systems, around 100 Hz for the force measurements and around 4000 Hz for the velocity measurements. Results in steady conditions well compare with previous results in references, both as functions of wind tunnel velocity and yaw angles. In unsteady conditions, whatever amplitude is considered, time-average drag and lift coefficients and their dependence on yaw angle are consistently lower compared to the steady case. Phase-averaged coefficients in unsteady conditions can oscillate by around 20 % in comparison to time-average values and these fluctuations are strongly dependent on yaw angle and amplitude of oscillations, thus suggesting that they both contribute to instantaneous loads. Present investigations are related to improvements in set-up of control systems in assisted-driving (self-driving) vehicles.